Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

Tag Archives: power

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, August 14, 2017:

Nicolas Maduro

Inquiring minds are asking: what on earth is the US doing meddling in the affairs of Venezuela? The media has broadcast the rolling and accelerating disaster taking place there, with some even properly blaming it on socialist practices unleased by Marxist Hugo Chavez (they are called “Chavism” and its supporters are called “Chavists”) and his protégé, Nicolas Maduro.

Those policies, enforced with increasing vengeance upon a powerless citizenry, have all but destroyed a country that once was one of the most prosperous in South America.

Grant the point. But does this justify in any way U.S. interference? Does it justify sanctions, freezing of assets of Maduro and his henchmen, and removing the freedom of Americans to do business with him, or them? Notice please that the sanctions only apply to about 30 of Maduro’s people and not to any of the 20 or so American oil refineries currently supporting Maduro’s Marxist regime to the tune of a billion dollars a month.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 7, 2017:

Nicolas Maduro, the communist thug who now rules Venezuela

Following the typical historical pattern of socialist takeovers, the Venezuelan National Constituent Assembly (NCA) replaced the duly elected National Assembly on Friday, opening the ceremony with a speech from a Cuban communist guerrilla, followed by a speech reflecting a total disconnect from reality, and ending with giving the boot to a former Chavista who has in recent months become an embarrassment.

Reiterating the theme that the United States, and especially President Donald Trump, is responsible for Venezuela’s troubles, Fernando Soto Rojas, a Cuban-trained guerilla, opened the meeting of the NCA, shouting, “Yankee imperialism has not been able to stop the march of the people!”

The NCA then appointed Maduro’s foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez as head of the new body. Her total disconnect from reality was exposed by her claim that

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (shown) announced over the weekend that he would be filing a motion to stop the federal government from withholding grant funds under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program. Municipalities such as Chicago receive this funding to help them fight crime. Lord knows, crime is rampant in Chicago. But federal funding, which Chicago has been receiving all along, does not necessarily mean less crime. It does mean, however, that the federal government, as the provider of the funding, may use the funding as leverage to get the recipients to do what the feds want them to do — in this case, upholding federal immigration laws.

Now that protesters have left the scene and Maduro has removed the primary thorn in his side, the socialist revolution begun by Marxist Hugo Chavez two decades ago now appears to be complete.

Before the new illegally elected National Constituent Assembly (NCA) took over on Friday, Maduro’s Prosecutor General, Luisa Ortega Diaz (shown), had become a thorn in his side. A hard-core Chavista, Diaz was appointed in 2007 and helped Hugo Chavez cement his position in place as Venezuela’s Marxist dictator. When her term ran out in 2014 she was appointed for another six-year term.

The first order of business of the new “constituent assembly” voted unanimously into power on Sunday in Venezuela will be to exact retribution on President (now dictator) Nicolas Maduro’s enemies. Official installation takes place on Monday in the same palace where Maduro’s opposition won control overwhelmingly in 2015.

In a speech replete with attacks on the United States and President Donald Trump, Maduro (shown) engaged in political rhetoric designed to hide the truth of just what happened on Sunday:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, July 28, 2017:

The Coat of arms of Venezuela

In its foreign travel advisory issued Thursday, the U.S. State Department warned American visitors against traveling to Venezuela and ordered family members of U.S. government employees at its embassy in Caracas to leave the country. It also offered assistance for those employees wanting to leave before the country’s crucial and controversial election on Sunday. The order and warnings were due to “social unrest, violent crime and pervasive food and medicine shortages” in the country.

Sunday’s vote could be crucial for the direction of the country run by Marxist Nicolas Maduro. Already rumors of vote fraud are suggesting that

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, July 24, 2017:

Charles Schumer

The Democrat Party’s new slogan, rolled out on Monday by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (shown, D-N.Y.) in the New York Times, sounds an awful lot like the slogan of Papa John’s Pizza (“Better Ingredients, Better Pizza, Papa John’s.”) The new official slogan of the party, according to Schumer, is “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future.”

A closer look reveals old, tired, stale, and tasteless ideas of a party that not only has lost its way, but has lost a majority of Americans along the way. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll revealed that

Thursday’s called strike could be the culmination of the rush of events leading to the successful removal of Venezuela’s Marxist dictator, Nicolas Maduro (shown). The strike called by Maduro’s political opposition is the “final offensive” in the months-long effort to depose him, according to Freddy Guevara, one of the opposition leaders. Said Guevara, “We are calling all the country to take part in a massive and violence-free protest through a nationwide strike for 24 hours,” adding that it would be a “mechanism for pressure and to prepare for the definitive escalation to take place next week.”

Last Sunday nearly 7½ million Venezuelans voted informally to protest Maduro’s plans to replace key members of the country’s legislative body, creating a “Constituent Assembly” that would lay the groundwork for rewriting the country’s constitution and cementing Maduro into office permanently. That vote is scheduled for Sunday, July 30.

One of those overseeing last Sunday’s plebiscite was the president of the University of Venezuela, Cecilia Garcia Arocha. She said the result of last Sunday’s vote “sent a clear message to the national executive [the Maduro regime] and the world.”

One of the essential doctrines involved in limiting government is the separation of powers. By putting governmental powers into separate hands, the founders hoped that each would constrain the other and thus protect liberty. Article I of the federal Constitution states that “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article III states that “The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

Florida’s constitution is very similar:

The judicial power shall be vested in a supreme court, district courts of appeal, circuit courts, and county courts. No other courts may be established by the state, any political subdivision, or any municipality.

According to Ben Cohen, North Korea’s “Supreme Leader,” Kim Jong-un, is certifiably insane. Wrote Cohen: “Kim [is] executing hundreds of officials he deems to be disloyal in extraordinarily brutal fashion … shocking even hardened North Korean elites used to regular purges, random executions, and extreme torture.”

But how would his paranoia, his megalomania, inform his view of America? Would he be willing to launch an EMP attack using one or both of his satellites currently hovering over the US mainland, knowing that the missiles that would be returned from EMP-hardened missile sites here would obliterate his country, turning everything north of the 38th Parallel into glass?

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, May 16, 2017:

While the mainstream media is focusing most of its attention on North Korea’s missile tests, it is largely ignoring what some are calling the rogue nation’s real threat: using one or both of its two present satellites hovering over the United States to launch an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack instead.

One of those scoffing at the very idea of EMP attack from North Korea is Jeffrey Lewis, who blogs in favor of nonproliferation at his site “Arms Control Wonk.” On National Public Radio in April, Geoff Brumfiel asked him: “Could North Korea really do this?” Lewis laughed, responding, “This is the favorite nightmare scenario of a small group of very dedicated people.”

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, chief of staff of the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, warned on Monday:

Another crack opened in the wall supporting Marxist dictator Nicolas Maduro’s administration: On Monday Major General Miguel Rodriguez Torres, who ran Maduro’s intelligence service until he was fired in 2014, said his country is moving toward civil war: “We’re seeing much larger masses protesting across all major cities, including the working-class neighborhoods. The government is losing control.” He added:

When Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced his bill — the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act — on Tuesday, he said the $14 billion seized from the Mexican drug lord would help build President Trump’s wall:

$14 billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border.

The money isn’t available just for the taking, added Cruz:

The U.S. government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering.

As part of the agreement between Mexico and U.S. authorities, El Chapo won’t face the death penalty, but his confiscated assets might be available if Cruz’s bill passes the Senate and the House, and is signed into law by the president. Confiscated assets such as these are usually directed to law enforcement efforts in the United States.

Cruz told Tucker Carlson on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Wednesday that it’s “only fitting” that drug money be used to build the wall:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, April 21, 2017:

Marxist Nicolas Maduro

Andres Malave grew up in Caracas until Chavez took over. Then he and his family were able to escape – barely – to the US. Wrote Malave, “It was a hard choice, but in hindsight, we were the lucky ones.”

Now he laments the blind eye many Americans turn towards the rioting, the deaths, the crime, the economic devastation, and the ravages of inflation that Venezuela is suffering:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 20, 2017:

Following the government’s confiscation of its parts plant, General Motors announced on Wednesday it was ceasing all operations in Venezuela. The company said the seizure was illegal and that it would seek legal remedies.

The announcement puts 2,700 workers making replacement parts in the plant out of work, with small comfort coming from GM, which said it would make “separation payments” to those employees.

But what then? Another 3,900 people will likely find their jobs in jeopardy as the 79 car dealers that employ them will also shortly disappear in the aftermath of GM’s decision.

GM joins an ever-growing list of companies that can’t operate in the socialist paradise run by Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, including

It took EURACTIV, the online source that focuses on European policymaking, to report that the Trump administration has signaled that, previous protestations to the contrary, it won’t object to a third Greek bailout. The anonymous Trump administration tipster told its reporters: “We’re looking for the Europeans to help Greece to resolve its economic problems by the Fund [the International Monetary Fund], despite the criticism of many Republicans regarding the two previous bailout programs in 2010 and 2012.”

This anonymous tip kicks to the curb protestations voiced by Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in February that

As expected (and predicted in an earlier article in The New American), U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar denied on Wednesday the request by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to delay a public hearing over the Baltimore Police Department’s consent decree. The decree was hammered out by the previous administration and is nearing the final stage of its implementation.

The judge said that pushing back the hearing to allow Sessions’ Department of Justice, now operating under new guidelines, to review the decree would be ”inconvenient.” The request to cancel the hearing “at the 11th hour would be to unduly burden and inconvenience the court, the other parties, and most importantly, the public,” said Bredar, adding, “The primary purpose of this hearing is to hear from the public. It would be especially inappropriate to grant this late request for a delay when it would be the public who were most adversely affected by a postponement.”

The “public,” made up of dozens of organizations and individuals, has already submitted nearly 200 pages of comments on the proposed consent decree, with nearly all of them (also not surprisingly) supportive of it. This reflects the long successful history of the Hegelian Dialectic

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, April 7, 2017:

The beauty of the CRA, the Congressional Review Act, is that it provides a process by which an incoming administration can look back at the previous administration’s rules and regulations and repeal, neuter, or abandon those it doesn’t like. In addition, once a rule has been repealed, the CRA prohibits it from growing back again. Call it “Roundup” 2.0 for political weeds and unwanted grasses.

What’s remarkable is that, since its enactment in 1996 as part of the Republicans’ Contract with America, it has only been used once: by George W. Bush. Congress passed five CRA resolutions under Obama but he vetoed them all. For him, no government was too big nor any regulation too outrageous.

When Marc Short, Trump’s Director of Legislative Affairs, was given the mike at the White House press conference on Wednesday, he spoke at length about the president’s aggressive use of the CRA to turn back a few of the many hundreds of burdens applied to businesses by the previous administration. Before taking questions Short said:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 22, 2017:

Fitch Ratings downgraded Saudi Arabia’s credit rating again on Wednesday, bringing it perilously close to “speculative,” from “investment grade.” It dropped the country’s long-term credit rating from A+ to AA-, but with a “stable” outlook, noting that the reduction was due to the country’s “continued deterioration of public and external balance sheets.”

Fitch sees what both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, the other two global credit rating agencies, see: declining oil prices hurting a country that once enjoyed the highest investment grade ratings thanks to high oil prices that not only paid for extravagant welfare programs and subsidies to its citizens but allowed it to accumulate three-quarters of a trillion dollars in foreign reserves — more than ample to ride out any conceivable storm.

The rating agencies have seen that an inconceivable storm arrived in 2014 when